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Expediting Equity and Social Justice
Running Head: Expediting Equity and Social Justice
Expediting Equity and Social Justice: One Woman Professor’s Story
Presentation Summary for Research on Women and Education
33rd Annual Fall Conference
San Antonio, TX
October 18-20, 2007
Susan J. Katz, Ph.D.Diana F. Ryan, Ph.D.
Department of Educational LeadershipMaster of Arts in Teaching and Leadership
College of EducationSchool of Education
RooseveltUniversitySaintXavierUniversity
430 S. Michigan Ave.3700 W. 103rd Street
Chicago, Il60605Chicago, IL60655
312-341-2191773-298-5009
312-341-4326 fax773-298-3201 fax
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Expediting Equity and Social Justice
Introduction
In this presentationwe focused on how one activist scholarteaches, conducts research, and serves her Chicago university and community. Previously, we have conducted classroom investigations of specific pedagogy designed to guide students to think deeply and critically about issues of social justice in schools and communities and reflect on how they might take responsibility for change (Katz & Ryan, 2005).Now we want to know how other professors in teacher and leader preparation programs integrate social justice into their work lives.
Investigating an Activist Scholar
In the presentation, we described our process for identifying an activist scholar. Initially, we searched university and college of education websites in Chicago for mention of social justice scholars. The online conference schedule from The 4th International Conference on Teacher Education and Social Justice at University of IllinoisChicago (UIC), January, 2007, led us to several activist scholars, including Therese Quinn, professor at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute (SAI). We searched for other evidence and found she was known for her activism in her university and the larger community. Thereseteaches in the undergraduate teacher education programat SAIand is the liaison for the MulticulturalArtsHigh School, one of four new public schools within a school – Little Village Lawndale High School Campus in Chicago. Therese also serves on the coordinating committee of the Chicago Teachers for Social Justice and sits on the Local School Council of a Chicago public high school. On the SAI website, Therese described her interests as: educational equity and access in both formal (schools) and informal settings (museums), unsanctioned and resistant uses of public and private spaces, the effects of privatization on public schools, and the roles that art and artists play in social change for justice. Clearly she was someone we could learn from, so we contacted her and she agreed to an interview. At this first interview, we requested course syllabi, class handouts, and other documented class activities, publications, presentations (internally and externally), and any other record of leadership for social justice within her university, and community. We also asked to observe her class. After we interviewed her and observed her class, we recorded our reflections. Diana noted that Therese was “genuine, sincere and is intrinsically committed to social justice issues . . . very much a critical thinker.” Similarly, Susan wrote: “Therese is passionate about her work and her ideas of social justice. . . . She takes on the issues that really strike her as unjust – issues in her neighborhood, her organizations, and in her workplace.”
Intrinsic Commitment to Social Justice
Therese grew up in California in the ‘60s and ‘70s and said it was the time and place that led to her intrinsic commitment to social justice. She told us several stories of how activism and resistance shaped her commitment. For example, her participation in a sixth grade protest against mandatory skirts for girls showedher thatcollectively even students could make unfair policies change. And in high school, she discovered she had some power when she lobbied for alternative, but relevant assignments. When her mother married an African American man,Therese saw prejudice and racism on a personal basis.
Therese described herself as an artist, teacher, and student. For her, teaching pulls it all together: “… the art stuff, the political stuff, the slightly non-traditional academic stuff” (Interview 2007). She says each of us is always a student:
. . . it’s our destiny to learn as long as we are here; learning is not finite. Curiosity and practice are the hallmarks of learning, but aren’t they also of artistry, of the teacher? One mode loops around to the next—we learn, then communicate, and in the dialogue something is new, and we create. And again are [alerted] to something surprising, and the need to give it form and often to pass it on and on. . . . In teaching for my own classroom if I’m going to try to be creating a social justice environment or an environment that is conducive to social justice or talking about that, I try to make sure that we address things up front like power, who’s got it, who doesn’t, and how that shapes how we are able to access things in the world or understand the world. . ..(Interview, 2007)
Therese works with her students by having them conduct online research about and then visit the communities where they have been placed in schools for field experience, and then having them respond to a list of guided questions, such as: “Do you feel comfortable in this neighborhood? Is this the first time you’ve been in this neighborhood with this population? What were the trigger points for you that seemed to make you uncomfortable?” When students return to her classroom to debrief, she weaves the dialogue around issues of power, race, racism, privilege, white privilege, and white supremacy.
We also saw Therese’s intrinsic commitment to social justice in the community. When planning an Africa exhibit at the Field Museum of Chicago, Therese discovered that people of color felt disconnected from museums. The more she heard, the more she “. . . thought about what museums needed to do to be more responsible about the communities that visit them and that pay for them through their city taxes” (Interview, 2007). Thereseand a colleague have taken a strong position about community covenants or lifestyle statements where preservice teachers have to disavow support for gays and lesbians. At one university recruitment event, they offered an alternative covenant that supported all people. They came up with a campaign, “Accredit Love Not Condemnation” and invited students at college days (from both public and private colleges) to sign a pledge stating that teachers should respect and love all students, including GLBTQ students.
If all students have to sign this pledge which is a condemning pledge, then we wanted to create one that was love centered and affirming. So we made this little pledge and made these t-shirts we wore and buttons. And we passed out this pledge that said: Accredit Love Not Condemnation. (Interview, 2007)
To resist criticism and censure, Therese and her colleague invited one of the universities to come to a conversation about this issue. This collaborative effort did not succeed but she and her colleague had acted to raise consciousness about social justice issues.
Conclusion
We want to cultivate community activism in ourselves and our students. Therese Quinn is one model of how professors can commit to the work of social justice as they teach, conduct research, and involve themselves in service.We are also learning important ethical issues as we engage in research and writing. In the process of developing our perspectives as researchers, we have realized the importance of trying not to objectify or essentialize our participants and their experiences – but keep them human and multi-dimensional. We want to tell their individual stories in consideration of their own worldviews and logic. What do they tell us about their backgrounds and pathways? How do they enact their favorite themes? We want to do the “least possible damage by telling the best possible story there is to tell. . .” (Ibanez-Carrasco & Meiners, 2004, p. 7).
This glimpse into Therese Quinn’s story expands our understanding of the 2006 RWE conference call that asked us not to “defer our dreams” any longer and how as faculty members we can work toward “expediting equity and social justice.”
References
Ibanez-Carrasco, F. & Meiners, E.R. (2004).Introduction making knowledge in public: Overturning an audience. In F. Ibanez-Carrasco & E. R. Meiners (Eds). Public acts: Disruptive readings on making curriculum public. Introduction (pp. 1-12). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Katz, S.J., & Ryan, D.F. (2005, Summer). Two women professors search for tools to teach social justice. Advancing Womenin Leadership.
social_justice1/Katz.html